


Closed Doors & Open Windows

by lustmordred



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 17:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lustmordred/pseuds/lustmordred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moon was full and John still hadn’t bought curtains for the windows, so his entire apartment was lit up like morning. He couldn’t sleep, he was alone and they had finished with their last number from yesterday in time enough for dinner, so he was up at midnight sitting in the middle of the floor cleaning an AR-15 by the light of the full moon. John was sure that said all sorts of things about him, symbolic, Freudian things, but he found it calming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closed Doors & Open Windows

**Author's Note:**

> So this has turned into a weird kind of round-robin type series. This follows [The Grit from Stars](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1013645) by [Portrait_of_a_Fool](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Portrait_of_a_Fool/pseuds/Portrait_of_a_Fool). The series started with a story I wrote for her birthday called [Every Day Above Ground](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1005690). You don't have to read those first (I don't think), but you probably should since it's all connected. We aren't really sure how to go about linking these all together in a better way, but we'll figure it out eventually. Until then, we'll link to them in notes. There will be a story following this written by [Portrait_of_a_Fool](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Portrait_of_a_Fool/pseuds/Portrait_of_a_Fool) coming soon.

If I leave you, it doesn’t  
mean I love you any less

_Warren Zevon_

 

The moon was full and John still hadn’t bought curtains for the windows, so his entire apartment was lit up like morning. He couldn’t sleep, he was alone and they had finished with their last number from yesterday in time enough for dinner, so he was up at midnight sitting in the middle of the floor cleaning an AR-15 by the light of the full moon. John was sure that said all sorts of things about him, symbolic, Freudian things, but he found it calming. Harold had his codes, his computers, his programs and projects. John had guns with their lanolin smell, their cold, solid metal with parts that fit together perfectly just the way they were supposed to, no other way but one. Neither of them could be called people persons by any stretch of the imagination, but John actually thought he was making much better progress in that area than Harold was. 

John had eaten his dinner alone, which he was doing more and more. This time, Harold’s excuse was a business dinner, which he wouldn’t elaborate on when John asked him to. John ended up feeding most of his sandwich to Bear, reading a couple chapters of _Don Quixote_ at the counter while he drank half a bottle of scotch. 

For a long time, John didn’t mind it. The lies, the evasion, the little ways Harold would push him away so that they were in a bizarre dance, taking two steps back for every three steps forward. It was like a game of chess or tug of war and John enjoyed the flirtation. Harold pushing him back, guarding his heart, only to give in. He _always_ gave in. But then Harold could be cruel. Sometimes he didn’t mean to be, but at times, he knew and he did or said it anyway, and just like _that_ it wasn’t fun anymore. It wasn’t a game anymore. Those cruel moments piled up, becoming more common as Harold lost ground in their dance. As the little things John knew about Harold Finch added up (he liked baseball and foreign films and pocket squares and expensive, bitter coffee and Oscar Wilde), the pile growing like the heap of little wounds he inflicted whenever he sensed John getting too close, John could feel himself tiring like a horse at the end of a hard race. 

It was the little things that Harold wouldn’t let him have that John found himself wanting most. He wanted dinners and conversation and idle touches. What he got was an oppressive and pervasive sense of anxiety and uncertainty. Harold was insecure with him and went out of his way to make John feel it too, which left him feeling cheap. It implied that they were themselves cheap people, involved in nothing but the occasional cheap, pleasant act of friction. John _always_ forgave him. Harold couldn’t help being the way he was, but John couldn’t help wanting more than that. If he hadn’t wanted more, he wouldn’t have been with Harold at all. Harold was a lot of things, but a sex god wasn’t one of them. 

Bear was asleep in the middle of his bed and John glanced over at him when the dog rolled over. Bear lay on his back with his legs spread and his head hanging over the edge of the mattress, his tongue dangling and his lips back over bared teeth. 

John put the cleaned and reassembled AR-15 aside and picked up a handgun from the weapons spread out on the floor in front of him. He ejected the clip and pulled back the slide to empty the chamber, intending to clean and oil it. There was a knock at the door and he snapped the clip back in, pulled the slide to reload the chamber and got to his feet. On the bed, Bear rolled over and picked up his head with a soft grunt. As John crossed the apartment to the door, the dog jumped down and ran ahead of him, sniffing. When he reached the door, he put his nose to the crack at the bottom and woofed softly in greeting. 

_Harold._

John opened the door. Harold had his hand raised to knock again and froze that way when he saw John, naked from the waist up and barefoot, holding a semiautomatic handgun in his left hand. It was pointed at the floor, but he still looked alarmed at the sight of it. 

“What is it, Harold?”

“Oh, um.” Harold put his hand down and blinked at him. “Is the weapon really necessary?”

“It’s after midnight,” John said. “But no, I could probably kill you quite easily without it.”

Harold gaped at him. “Ah… is that something you think about?”

“No, but you never know who’s going to be at the door when you answer it this time of night.” John reached back and tucked the gun under his waistband at the small of his back. 

“Do… well, dangerous people usually _knock_?” Harold asked.

“In my experience, dangerous people fall into more than one category, Harold,” John said. “What do you want?”

“Well, I felt bad about earlier,” Harold said. He started to enter the apartment, but John put his hand up and leaned in the doorway, blocking him. Harold frowned at him and stood there staring at him for a beat. Finally, he said, “I know you don’t sleep much. I thought I’d make it up to you. We could… spend some time together. John, what’s going on?”

“I can’t anymore,” John said. He hadn’t realized he was going to say it until it just fell out of his mouth. Then he realized it was what he had wanted to say for a long time. It had been sitting there like a gargoyle in the back of his throat for months, maybe since all the way back in December. “I can’t do this anymore. I _won’t_ do this anymore.”

Harold’s eyes widened almost comically, but he didn’t really seem surprised. Shocked, perhaps, that it was happening now, that John was saying it while standing half naked and half drunk in his doorway, that it had come so calmly because they hadn’t been fighting. Maybe he expected John to throw something or scream like an angry woman. It would reach record low temperatures in Hell before he did, but maybe that was what Harold expected. 

“John,” Harold said, “I really did have a dinner with the partners at--”

“No,” John said. “I don’t care. Maybe this time you did. That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what?”

“So many things, Harold.” John ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Call me when we get another number. Goodnight.”

He closed the door in Harold’s face, feeling no satisfaction in the gesture at all. Bear was sitting expectantly by his feet and John nearly fell over him when he turned around. John cursed and went to get Bear’s leash. He clipped it on the dog’s collar and opened the door to find Harold still standing there where he had left him, looking a bit stunned. 

“Here,” John said, holding the end of the leash out to Harold. “Take him.”

Harold took the leash and looked down at Bear, frowning. “Why?”

“I got him for you,” John said simply. “Goodnight, Harold.”

Harold nodded and stepped back from the door as John closed it again. “Goodnight, John.”

††††††††

It should have made things easier on Harold after John closed the door on him. It was over, it was done, finally and with finality. He didn’t have to lie and make up excuses for why they couldn’t go out anymore, why they couldn’t spend Christmas together or why Harold wouldn’t tell him his birthday or why… _so many things_. John would stop reaching to take his hand in private moments and Harold wouldn’t have to worry about keeping his guard up so he could be in time to snatch it away. He didn’t even have to feel guilty because _John_ was the one who finally ended it, which meant Harold was completely within his rights to feel sorry for himself, while secretly gloating because it had worked out perfectly and now he was entirely off the hook. It was a narrow escape and he should have been pleased and relieved because now things could go back to the way they were before. His heart, far as John was concerned, remained unbroken.

Except.

 _Except_ that wasn’t true. He was slowly coming to realize it and he did not at all appreciate that little kernel of insight. Sometime when he wasn’t looking, when he wasn’t paying attention, when he was focusing it all on _not_ giving an inch, it had slipped away. Maybe when he was running his fingers over the scars on John’s torso, telling himself stories about where they came from to fill in the gaps in the chronicle of John Reese’s life that he kept in his head just for himself, it slipped right by. John wormed his way in when Harold thought he was so protected, or Harold’s own traitorous heart bound itself to him in a moment of weakness. 

There had to be some explanation for why John’s quiet presence in the library was suddenly so upsetting. John was lurking behind him as Harold typed and brought up information on their new numbers and he had never been so distracted by it. He wanted to shoo him away, and any other time, he would have, but now he hesitated. He wanted to apologize. It was an itch on his tongue, like the compulsion of an insane person to lick a doorknob before opening the door. 

It was only 9 o’clock and Harold’s tongue already hurt from biting it. 

There were three numbers--not counting John’s number, which the machine gave him frequently and Harold had learned to instantly discard--and they seemed to be completely random. They were of a similar age and the same race, but didn’t seem to otherwise have anything in common. At least not anything Harold had been able to find. One was a woman, a schoolteacher who had recently lost her job of five years thanks to the economy and had been forced to go on welfare. The other two were men, one a construction worker with a degree from Northwestern, the other an executive producer of a news program who was recently divorced from a woman with no discernable reason to want him dead. They were from different income brackets, they went to different schools, they had different friends, they frequented different shops and restaurants, they didn’t even ride the same buses or take the same taxis.

“I suppose it’s possible that all of these people have separate, disconnected problems that would lead the machine to give us their numbers,” Harold mused. “Except I was given them all at the same time. That usually means that there is _some_ connection.”

John walked around Harold’s desk and went over to the board to study the pictures of the three people and their information. “They don’t even live in the same neighborhoods,” he said. 

“No,” Harold said. 

“Their kids?” John asked. “They go to the same private school or daycare or something?”

“Only Mr. Parker--the news producer--has children,” Harold said. “A two year old daughter named Emily. His wife has custody and he has visitation every other weekend. He could have fought her about the custody, probably even won, but he didn’t. The divorce seems to have been amicable.”

“I’ll watch him,” John said. He turned and started to leave. Bear got in his way and John paused to pet him, but he kept going. “Call Shaw and have her watch the construction guy. I’ll get Fusco on the teacher.”

“What are you planning to _do_?” Harold called after him. “Just… watch him?”

“Yeah, Finch. Until something happens or you come up with a better idea,” John said. 

He left and closed the gate in front of Bear to make him stay. With a whine, Bear lay down in the hallway in front of the gate and watched John leave. Harold watched him for a minute, sympathizing in a way that felt quite foolish, then turned back to his computer with a sigh and called Shaw.

††††††††

John spent the entire day following Don Parker around and not a single person tried to kill him. He went to the drycleaner, to work, out to lunch, back to work, he made more phone calls than any one human being should ever need to make in the course of a single day. Then he went out to dinner with a cute redheaded woman he knew from work, and they went back to his place and had what to John sounded like pretty unsatisfying sex, before she went home and he fell asleep. The guy seemed to like his job a little too much and didn’t really get along with one of the other producers too well, but it was more of a love-to-hate-you thing than a I’m-planning-to-kill-you thing. He was boring.

“I’m bored,” Shaw said in his ear. 

“Me too,” Fusco said. “I been watching this broad all day and she ain’t done nothing but drink cheap booze and sleep all fuckin day. She got up earlier long enough to warm up some canned soup. She threw it up and cried in the bathroom for an hour, then had another drink and went back to bed.”

“Maybe she’ll kill herself and you can go home,” Shaw said. 

“I wish she’d hurry the fuck up then. I think my ass fell asleep two hours ago,” Fusco said. 

Shaw laughed. “John?”

“Yes, Shaw?” John said. He was standing on the rooftop of a building across from Don Parker’s apartment. He had stopped watching him through the binoculars he was still holding when the lights had all gone off. 

“I don’t think anything’s happening to these people,” Shaw said. “You sure the machine isn’t… I don’t know. Wrong?”

“It’s not wrong,” John said. 

“The machine is never _wrong_ , Miss Shaw,” Harold piped up. “This is, however, very curious, I admit.”

“Well, whatever,” Shaw said. “I’m going home. I’m fucking hungry and my guy went to bed a while ago. Alone. Which is unfortunate, really, because he’s really hot and he probably didn’t have to.”

“You could always get closer to the subject, Shaw,” John suggested, smirking. “That might be a more effective way to figure out who wants him dead or if he’s planning to kill his boss or if we’re just chasing our tails.”

“I will if you will,” Shaw said. “I’ll pick up construction guy and fuck his brains out if you go pick up news producer guy and do the same. How ‘bout it? We’ll compare notes.”

“Miss Shaw!” exclaimed Harold reproachfully. 

Fusco laughed, but he did not offer to do the same with the drunk, depressed, out of work teacher. 

“Let’s give it one more day,” John said. He turned and crossed the roof to the stairs and opened the door to start down. “If tomorrow’s like this, then we’ll talk.”

Shaw laughed and said, “You’re on.”

Harold made an indignant squawking sound that might have had John’s name contained within it in some form. 

“Nothing’s happening here either. I’m going home,” Fusco said. He hung up.

“Fine,” Harold said, sounding offended in a way that John knew meant he would be pursing his lips and glaring into thin air. “Fine. We’ll reconvene in the morning.”

“Fine by me,” Shaw said. “Later, bitches.” She disconnected from the call.

Harold and John were alone on the phone and Harold said, “John--”

“Goodnight, Finch,” John said. He tapped his earpiece to disconnect and took it out of his ear. 

Thinking about his big, empty apartment, John started to walk in that direction. Thinking about another night spent on his floor cleaning guns by moonlight, about finding one of Harold’s pocket squares between the cushions of his sofa, about all of Bear’s toys still scattered on the floor to trip him up, he put his hands in his pockets and trudged on. He saw a liquor store about a block ahead on the other side of the street and veered off in that direction, walking faster.

††††††††

John tried to catch the lamp before it hit the floor, but he just made it worse. He fumbled for it, missed and it slipped through his fingers to crash against the wall and shatter. It was a heavy crockery lamp that made a hell of a loud noise when it broke. Upstairs, Carter cursed and stumbled out of bed, stubbed her foot against her dresser and cursed some more, then started down the stairs.

With a defeated sigh, John sat down to wait for her. 

He didn’t have to wait long. Less than thirty seconds later, Cater came into the living room with a flashlight held under her handgun. She swept it over the room, the light stopping when it landed on John seated at the end of her sofa with a big bottle of scotch whiskey. 

“You _trying_ to get shot, John?” she demanded. She reached over and hit the light switch on the wall to turn on the lights. “Because it seems to me like you’ve got a bit of a death wish. What the hell are you doing in my house? It’s three in morning.”

“I dunno. Needed to talk to someone,” John muttered. 

“You what?” Carter said. She lowered her gun and turned off the flashlight. “Don’t you ever knock?”

John smiled faintly, remembering Harold asking him the same thing not long after they started working together. Harold had been asleep over his desk at the library after working all night and John brought him coffee and the newspaper, teased him a little just to annoy him. 

“John?” Carter said. 

“Hmm? No, not if I can help it,” he said. 

Carter walked into the room and put the flashlight and her gun down on the coffee table. She looked at the mess of the broken lamp, but didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she sat on the other end of the couch from John and studied him with a thoughtful frown. 

“You’re drunk,” she said after a minute. 

John raised his bottle in a little mocking salute to her really astute observation of the obvious. He took a drink as he was lowering it. “Just like old times, right, Carter?” he said. “First time I met you, I was drunk. Not this drunk, but, yanno…”

“No, I don’t know, John,” Carter said. “What the hell’s going on? _Why_ are you drunk? And in my house in the middle of the night?” She looked around and scowled when she saw the keypad to her house alarm dangling by its wires from the wall. “John, I think we need to establish some boundaries.”

“Yeah. I was going to mention that. You need a new security system,” John said, following her line of sight. “I cracked that thing open like a walnut in ten seconds, had it disabled in… hmm, fifteen. You gotta be more careful. You’re lucky it was me.”

“Uh-huh. This is what I’m talking about,” Carter said. “ _Boundaries_. You can tell Finch he owes me a new alarm system.”

“Sure,” John said. “You can’t tell him I was here, though. That would be… telling.”

Carter stared at him. “What?”

“I can’t talk to anyone else,” John said. He was muttering again and Carter cocked her head like maybe she hadn’t heard him. “You’re a good listener, hmm?”

“Sure, John,” she said. 

“Yeah. And you’re not like Shaw. You’re more… normal,” John said. “She’d just say she told me so, then add something completely rude to it because… well, because. And she’d be right, but I don’t… I mean… I don’t want to hear that right now. So you’re it.”

“I’m what?” Carter asked. “John, I’m in my robe right now. It’s three in the damn morning. You’re drunker than… well… And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

John suddenly sat up and looked around. “Where’s your kid, Carter?”

“Friend’s house. Don’t change the subject,” Carter said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m sad,” John said. He sighed and took a drink from his bottle. It was less than half full. Not low enough for him to start to worry yet, but not enough for him to feel completely comfortable either. “Sad… you know… inside.”

“Well… I guess that’s better than you being sad on the outside,” Carter offered. 

John chuffed soft, amused laughter and sat back. 

“John, what’s wrong?” Carter asked. 

“Fucking Harold,” John muttered. 

Carter’s eyebrows shot up, but she just waited for him to go on. 

“That’s why. At first, it was kind of fun. You know, the way flirting is,” John said. “I don’t mind that he’s private, that he lies, that Finch--that Harold--probably isn’t even his real name. Reese isn’t mine, you know.”

“I know,” Carter said. 

John nodded. He knew that she knew. “It’s so stupid,” he said. “He thinks--I know what he thinks. He thinks if he doesn’t care, then he won’t _care_. When I finally get blown up or shot in the face or whatever’s coming. See, but he still thinks he doesn’t care, and you know, I thought for the longest damn time that he did anyway because there are _things_ … but maybe not. There are, though… And he thinks he still has a choice and he thinks if he doesn’t care then he can just not care when something happens. It can be different from the other times, like Grace and that guy, Nathan… something. But I’ve seen him and it’s too late. You remember the bomb vest?”

“Of course,” Carter said. “You were such an idiot. I thought you were going to die.”

“So did I,” John said. “I think… He said he could hack the phone because of course if he’s programmed all these really smart computers and built the machine, which sees everything like we’re nothing, like we’re bugs, then of course he can hack a _phone_ , right? But he wasn’t sure and he almost did blow us up. If he doesn’t care, then _why_ did he stay with me? You see? That’s the thing I still can’t figure out, and I _think_ about it, Carter. All the time.”

“Well, of course Finch cares about you, John,” Carter said. “You’re friends, right? You work together every day and you’ve been through some tough times. There’s--Oh. Oh, holy shit.”

John looked around, startled out of his inebriated contemplation by the sudden urgency of her voice. “What? What’s wrong?”

“You and Finch,” Carter said, her eyes wide. “You mean _you_ and _Finch_? Together? Like… a couple?”

“Sorta,” John said. He frowned down at the bottle in his lap, then lifted it to drink. He eyed the amount of alcohol in the bottle when he lowered it and sighed. “Not really. He can be… mean. He does it on purpose, you know? Keeps me…” John’s lips curled in a wry expression. “Keeps me in my place. It fucks with my head, so I told him… The other night, I told him, no more. I can’t. Because I can’t. It’s screwing me up. I’m… you know, vulnerable. I can’t be vulnerable or I’ll be dead. And it’s self-defense because he might get out of it fine if he doesn’t care, but I won’t get out alive.”

“So, wait,” Carter said. “Are you gay, John? I don’t care. I won’t think less of you. I just never thought you were. I thought you and Zoe were--”

John smiled and rested his head back on the back of the sofa. “Yeah. I mean no, I’m not gay, but yeah, me and Zoe, we were. Are. I’m not even sure anymore, but yeah. It’s just… It’s Harold. Not because he’s a man or he’s cute or… anything. Just… It’s him. I don’t know why.”

“I think you know why,” Carter said. She still looked a little taken aback by the whole idea, but she was handling it well. “That’s a serious thing if you’re going against your sexuality for it and all. You know why.”

“Probably,” John said. “It’s a lot of things. But he makes me feel bad.”

“So you broke up with him,” Carter said. 

“Uh-huh. Had to,” John said. Under his breath he muttered again, “Had to.”

“He’ll regret it,” Carter said confidently. 

John picked his head up from the back of the sofa and blinked at her. “Why?”

“Probably for a lot of reasons, but have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?” she asked. 

John looked down at himself, at his rumpled suit and the bottle he still held in one hand. He shrugged. “No.”

“Okay, maybe not _recently_ recently, but you know what I mean,” Carter said. 

John had no idea what she meant. Then he did and he laughed because it was so ridiculous that she would think _that_ mattered in the long-run here at all. It didn’t even rate. “If it was just about that, he wouldn’t do and say the things he does and says. It’s not about that.”

“You mean you don’t have sex?” Carter asked, confused. “What have we been talking about then?”

“Sure we do,” John said. “If it were just about sex, none of _this_ would be happening. I wouldn’t be here.”

“Well, I didn’t say it was _just_ about sex,” she said. “Just he’ll regret it and I bet the sex is one very good reason.”

John smirked and shook his head. “Probably not,” he said tiredly. 

“Okay, another reason then… A better reason,” she said, thinking. “He’ll regret it because it ain’t gonna work the way he wants anyway. He thinks if he pushes you away and he don’t care, then if you die, he still won’t care and it won’t bother him so much. Bullshit. It’ll bother him even more, I think. Because he did that and he’ll have to live with it, too.”

John considered this, then drank some more whiskey. “I’m kind of… really offended that it’s some kind of foregone conclusion I’m going to get myself killed sometime soon. I have no intention whatsoever of dying. But even if I do, it’s no more likely to happen if I’m with him or if I’m not so… why not just _be with me_? It’s not… Damn it.”

Carter looked at the bottle in John’s hand, which was almost empty, and got up. “Well, I’m up now. You want a beer?” she asked. “Because I think I’ll have a beer.”

“Okay,” John said. He rested his head on the back of the sofa again and closed his eyes. “Can I stay here, Carter?”

He had walked most of the way to her house and taken the subway part of the way, gotten lost for a few minutes and been drunk when he arrived and broke in. If he had to go back home the same way, he was probably just going to pick the nearest park bench and pass out on it. 

Carter returned with two cold bottles of beer, took the bottle of warm whiskey out of John’s hand to set it on the table, and sat down. “You can stay on the couch,” she said. She gave him one of the beers. “How much have you had to drink?”

“That’s my second bottle,” John said. He put the beer bottle to his lips and drank down half of it. “I was hoping to be passed out awhile ago, but it hasn’t happened yet. Thanks, Joss.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, thinking he meant the beer. 

“I mean for listening. And not shooting me,” John said. 

Carter grinned. “You’re welcome,” she said again.

††††††††

The next morning, the machine didn’t give them any new numbers. For some reason, it gave Harold John’s number again, but he dismissed it as he had every time before. It was a hazard of the job that John’s life was constantly in danger, that there were people continuously plotting to kill him, and Harold couldn’t do much more to protect him from it than he did already without just benching him completely. John would never allow him to do that.

For that very reason, Harold sometimes wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake when he drafted John Reese into his service. It might have ultimately been better for everyone if he had left him to his own downward spiral and found someone more like Shaw to fill his place. Cold, methodical, thorough Shaw, who did not care a whit for her own redemption. She was loyal to a point, but loyal more out of a mechanical need to complete her task than out of devotion. She had none of John’s emotional baggage. Her story didn’t touch him. She didn’t always follow orders, but she only disobeyed them when Harold expected her to. 

She was also never, _ever_ late to work.

“Have either of you spoken to Mr. Reese yet this morning?” Harold asked Shaw and Fusco over the phone again. 

They were both once again keeping an eye on the teacher and the construction worker from the previous day. It was almost 9 o’clock and John had yet to show. Until he did, Harold was doing his best to monitor Don Parker himself on his phone and with the cameras in the building where he worked. So far there wasn’t much to worry about since the man had been stuck in a meeting for the last twenty minutes. 

“Nope,” Shaw said. “You try calling Zoe? Maybe they had a late night.”

Harold closed his eyes and took a calming breath so he wouldn’t snap at her. “I did that first thing when he was _late_ ,” he said, only partly managing it. 

“Well, I don’t know then. Did you two have a fight?” Shaw asked. 

“That is none of your business, Miss Shaw, and I fail to see what it has to do with Mr. Reese’s tardiness in any case,” Harold said. 

Shaw whistled softly through her teeth. “You clueless bastard,” she said. “Hey, Fusco, you fall asleep or something?”

“I’m here,” Fusco said. There was a slurping sound as he sipped coffee. “Maybe Wonder Boy fell down a well.”

“Highly unlikely, Detective,” Harold said. 

“I’m here,” John said. 

They all fell silent for a minute, then Harold said, “Where exactly is ‘here’, Mr. Reese?”

“In the lobby, watching Parker,” John said. He sounded half asleep and bored. “I told one of the assistant… associate whatevers that I’m applying for an internship.”

Shaw snorted laughter and Fusco coughed. 

“Really, Mr. Reese?” Harold said. “And what do you plan to do when someone calls your bluff?”

“Way I’m feeling right now?” John said. “ I don’t know. Maybe I could use a little career change.”

Harold frowned at the monitor in front of him. “Well, just let me know if you need a letter of recommendation then.”

“Sure, Finch,” John said. He sounded like he wasn’t listening anymore though. “Redhead from last night’s here. Looks like Parker’s having an office romance.”

Harold started typing, running searches on all female employees in Don Parker’s building with red hair. He found two, but one of them was in her forties, which made a hot little office tryst with the thirty-two year old Don Parker very unlikely. 

“Her name’s Tiffany McBride. She’s an associate producer who works with him on the nightly news program,” Harold said. “She’s single, has no children… might have a boyfriend. I’m seeing some activity on her credit card that suggests it.”

John made a dismissive sound in his throat and said nothing more. 

“I think my girl’s leaving the house,” Fusco said. 

“Follow her, please, Detective,” Harold said. 

“Alright. She don’t look like she’s going too far though. Hair’s a mess and she looks like she’s wearing what she slept in,” Fusco said. 

“These are the three most boring people on the planet,” Shaw said irritably. “At this rate, somebody wanting to kill any of them would be the most exciting thing to happen in their entire boring, slow, _tedious_ lives.”

“Be that as it may, Miss Shaw, you may not allow it to happen,” Harold said. 

“I don’t know, Finch. We might be doing them a favor,” Shaw said. 

“Miss Shaw--”

“Keep your panties on, Harold.”

Harold was quiet for a little while. Then he said, “Mr. Reese, can I ask the reason why you were so late today?”

“I was at Carter’s. I had to take a cab,” John said. 

Harold’s eyebrows lifted and he cleared his throat while he waited for an explanation. When none was immediately forthcoming, he said, “Mr. Reese?”

“I’m hung-over right now, Harold. I really need you to shut up,” John said. 

Harold made a surprised gasping sound and Shaw cackled delightedly. “I think we should talk about this later, Mr. Reese.”

“Fine,” John said. 

“It is completely unacceptable--”

“I said _fine_ ,” John snapped. 

Which meant that Harold would likely do all of the talking and John would do his best to look attentive while ignoring him. 

Harold had briefly thought after John broke things off that they would be able to go back to the way things were before. They were too mature to handle the ending of a relationship badly. Harold could spend a little time here and there feeling sorry for himself when he wasn’t being pleased with himself for escaping from the whole thing unscathed. And John would… go on being John and doing whatever it was John did. No muss, no fuss, Except John clearly didn’t see it the same way and apparently had no intention of letting Harold off the hook guilt free. He was going to be angry and resentful and let the mess of it get all over them both. 

Fine then. Harold resolved to just let him be angry. He could pout like a child and the only one it would hurt would be John because he was being so ridiculous. 

Harold’s phone rang, someone on the other line calling. He muted the call with Shaw, John and Fusco and answered it. It was Carter. 

“What the hell did you do to John?” she demanded without preamble. 

Harold’s eyes went wide and he felt a lead ball of alarm drop into his stomach. “Um… I don’t know what you mean, Detective,” he said. “He seems perfectly fine to me and I assure you, I haven’t done anything. I haven’t even seen him today.”

“Cut the bullshit, Finch,” Carter said. “I spent an hour listening to him talk last night and I’m inclined to believe him when he’s drunk a hell of a lot more than I am to believe you when you’re sober.”

“Detective, I don’t know why Mr. Reese would make our personal… relationship your business, but it just so happens that _he_ made the decision to end it, not me,” Harold said. 

“I know,” Carter said. “He did it out of self-preservation. You’re _mean_ to him? Really, Finch? You really think if you’re an asshole to him and keep pushing him away, you’re going to feel okay about it if and when he up and dies on you? Yeah, that’s right, he’s got your number, and he told me all about it and I think it’s crap.”

“Detective, it’s really not--”

“No. You shut up and let me finish, then I’ll let you go back to your little man behind the curtain shtick,” Carter said. She let out a deep breath in a huff and said, “He’s _so_ in love with you, do you know that? Yeah, I bet you do. That’s even worse, if you ask me. But he doesn’t even like men, Finch. It’s _you_. And look what you do with it.”

She said the last in a disgusted sneer and hung up before Harold could reply. 

Harold sat there with his mouth ajar and his eyes wide and unblinking while his mind raced. His first, initial reaction to being spoken to that way was a surprised combination of anger and bafflement. How dare she speak to him that way? How dare she stick her nose into his business? How _dare_ she take John’s side in the matter and dress him down like he was a bad child? One who had not only misbehaved, but had come home with dirty hands and a loaded diaper. No one talked to him that way. 

He was about to check back in with Shaw, John and Fusco when a call came in on the line again. Harold tried to think of who else it could be and answered it with a sick feeling of trepidation. 

“It’s me again,” Carter said curtly. “I forgot to tell you, but you owe me a new alarm system.”

“I what--” But Carter had hung up on him again. Harold sputtered angrily, then switched the phone over to check on how things were going with their three numbers. 

Shaw burped in his ear and Harold winced. “Jesus, I’m hungry,” she said. “Hey, Finch, I think your machine fucked up.”

“The machine is never wrong!” Harold said, perhaps a little louder than necessary. There was a whistle of feedback that made Shaw and John both curse. 

“You know, I got a real job I’m gonna have to get back to someday,” Fusco said, unperturbed by Harold’s outburst. “Wait, I’ve got movement.”

“Seriously?” Shaw asked. “What’s happening?”

“I followed her to the store on the corner. She just got back and there’s someone waiting for her.”

“Someone with a gun?”

“I don’t… No, just the neighbor. Some guy named Lassen trying to get in the teacher’s pants. He’s got something with him.”

“A gun?” Shaw asked again eagerly. 

“No, will you shut--It’s just Tupperware,” Fusco said. “Great. She’ll be throwing that up later.”

“It could be a bomb,” Shaw said. 

“A Tupperware bomb?” John asked skeptically. 

“Do those exist?” Fusco asked. 

“No,” John said. 

“They might,” Shaw said. “Somewhere.”

“Looks like it’s just food,” Fusco said. 

“It could be poisoned,” Shaw said.

“Miss Shaw, I find your bloodthirsty outlook most disagreeable,” Harold said. 

“Nah, they’re sitting down to eat it together,” Fusco said. “Fuck, I need another coffee.”

“I could bring you one,” Shaw offered. She seemed to realize how out of character that sounded and added, “I am just that bored right now. Finch, your machine’s fucking with us. What did you do to piss it off? ”

“The machine does not suffer such petty human emotions, Miss Shaw,” Harold said sourly. “But to answer your question, no, there is nothing I can think of that would inspire it to send us on a wild goose chase as a means of punishment.”

Unless even the machine was taking John’s side. That was something Harold found absolutely ludicrous. However, it was turning out to be just that kind of day.

††††††††

It was getting late and the most interesting thing to happen to either of the three numbers was when Don Parker got hit in the face with a door by an intern on her way out of the control room during their broadcast. He suffered a bloody nose and a bruise over his left eye, but he would definitely live. Parker went home after that and John relocated to the rooftop of the building across from his apartment where he could look over right in his widows. Parker picked up Chinese takeout and watched a football game from earlier that he had recorded.

“My guy’s watching TV,” Shaw said tiredly. “Alone. I think he might be gay, which just figures.”

“I outta be getting a bonus for this shit,” Fusco said. “My girl’s in bed, too. Still. Finch, I’m going home.”

Harold sighed through the phone. “Alright. Goodnight, Detective.”

“Count me out, too,” Shaw said. 

“I think perhaps we should think about letting this one go, Finch,” John said. “We’re getting nowhere.”

“Much as I would like to agree with you, Mr. Reese, I can’t imagine how we would all feel if we gave up now and something happens to all of them later,” Harold said. 

“I’m fine with it,” Shaw said. 

“Me, too,” Fusco said. “I can’t be doing this every damn day if nothing’s happening.”

“We’ll probably have another number tomorrow,” John said. “Let’s call it a night.”

Shaw and Fusco were more than happy with that idea. They both disconnected from the call. John was about to, but Harold hurried to stop him. 

“Mr. Reese, a word pl--”

“Goodnight, Finch,” John said, his fingers hovering over his earpiece. 

“Don’t you dare hang up on me again,” Harold said. 

John sighed, but he left the connection open as he left his post and descended the stairs to the street. “What is it, Finch?”

“It’s been pointed out to me that I may have handled our… arrangement… badly,” Harold said. 

John snorted. “’Our arrangement’?”

“Well… things between us,” Harold said. “Things of a personal nature.”

“Okay,” John said, humoring him. 

“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you, Mr. Reese?”

“Whatever the hell _this_ is, no, Harold, I’m not.”

“I’ve been aware of your… feelings toward me for a while now,” Harold said. He hesitated, then went on. “I may have… taken advantage of them from time to time. I may have… well… taken it for granted. I don’t understand… ah… a lot of things. I’m not used to that. I’m used to understanding everything, but this is… it’s different. It’s… But I may have made a big mistake. I’ve only just realized that.”

“You don’t sound at all sure about anything you’re saying, Harold,” John said. He reached the ground floor and slipped out a side exit into an alley that ran around the back of the building. “Is this some kind of apology?”

“No,” Harold said quickly. “No, it’s not that. I just… Detective Carter said something earlier that made a lot of sense. It made me think I might have done this all wrong.”

“What did she say?” John asked. Leave it to Carter, he thought. 

He left the alley and started walking down the sidewalk toward a three-way intersection where he could signal for a taxi. A man walking about ten feet behind him coughed into his fist. 

“I think it was just the way she said it,” Harold said. “It sounded so ridiculous coming from her. I don’t think… I don’t think I won’t care when you die no matter what. I think it’s too late for that now.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty much stuck with me,” John said. 

“From here till kingdom come,” Harold said dismally. “One way or another, I think so, yes. We should… I would like it if… We should try to make the best of it, Mr. Reese.”

“Harold,” John, then he stopped. He had been about to cave, about to forgive him. There wasn’t much he couldn’t forgive Harold and even this wasn’t unforgivable, but if he kept letting him get away with it, kept accepting his unspoken apologies so easily and letting him do it over and over, then Harold would keep doing it. If he allowed him to get away with treating him badly, then Harold would never have any reason to stop. He said, “Alright, Harold. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow at work then.”

“You… Oh. Well alright then, Mr. Reese,” Harold said. 

“Excuse me,” said the man behind John. 

John glanced around, ‘goodnight’ on the tip of his tongue, and the man swung something. It was just a movement in the dark, something coming toward his face, but John only had time to flinch, bracing himself for it, before the side of his head exploded with blazing white pain. Then everything went dark.

††††††††

Harold listened to the sound of shuffling, dragging, someone who was _not_ John cursing, and he didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t an entirely new experience, but it wasn’t often that he didn’t know what to do, or at least couldn’t think of something. He sat there listening to whatever was happening, knew it was bad, that it was _very_ bad, and he couldn’t think. It was like his brain was offline. He was getting nothing but an error message and humming white noise.

“John?”

No answer. Harold hadn’t expected one really. He was familiar with the sound of John fighting with someone. He heard it often enough that he could tell the difference between John fighting when he was winning (usually) and John fighting when he was losing (occasionally), and this was neither. 

“John?!”

Someone muttered unintelligibly, then the phone screamed feedback and the call died. 

“Oh,” Harold whispered. “Oh, no.”

It had happened, was all he could think. _It_ had happened, and had he really believed he wouldn’t feel bad about it? There was a cold, hard, heavy ball of dread in the pit of his stomach, greasy and yawning and terrifying. It had happened, the worst had happened, and he had survived it but now he felt small, helpless and lost. It was like waking up beside Nathan after the ferry explosion, listening to the _beep, beep, beeeeeeep_ of his dying heart, then the silence. That loud silence. Knowing he had lost everything, just _everything_ and there would be no going back, not ever. There would be no fixing it, only severed ties and not enough time to mourn. 

“No,” Harold said to the silent library. 

On the floor, Bear picked his head up from his bed and whined. 

“It hasn’t happened. I’m not going to _let_ it,” Harold said. He hit a few buttons on his computer, dialing Carter‘s phone. When she answered, he said, “I understand you’re unhappy with me at the moment, Detective, but if we could put that aside for now, I think it would be best. Something’s happened to Mr. Reese and I need your help.”

He told Carter what he’d heard over the phone and gave her the address where John had been when the earpiece was destroyed. She went to go investigate it and Harold called Shaw. She was at a bar, but when he told her what had happened, she left immediately and promised to see him at the library in ten minutes. 

Nine minutes and forty-three seconds later, Shaw strode into the library. “So, who took him?” When Harold just blinked at her stupidly, she snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Wake up, Finch. Snap out of it, we don’t have time for that shit. Do we have any idea who took him?”

“No,” Harold said. He blinked and waved her hand out of his face. “I don’t know where to start. I’ve been thinking it might have something to do with the three numbers you’ve been watching.”

Shaw made a rude scoffing sound. “Right. Did you check on them to see if one of them did it?”

“Yes,” Harold said. “Detective Carter is at the building where John was when I last heard from him. She will check in on Mr. Parker and see if there’s anything on the security cameras in the area. I… I checked the cameras around the others and Miss Harris--”

“The drunk, depressed teacher,” Shaw said. 

“Yes. She’s sleeping,” Harold said. 

“Of course she is,” Shaw said. “And my guy? Ah… Giovanni?”

“Mr. Giovanni just finished a long-distance phone call with his mother in Italy,” Harold said. “He’s at home.”

“Great,” Shaw said, throwing up her arms. “Now what?”

“Now… Well, now I suppose we’ll have to go through the footage on the security cameras around their homes and work places,” Harold said.

“You’re kidding,” Shaw said. 

“No. It… It’s the only place I can think to start,” Harold said. 

“What about HR?” Shaw asked. “We know it’s not them?”

“No,” Harold said miserably. “We don’t know _anything_ , Miss Shaw.”

Shaw frowned at him. “Bad day, Harold?”

“This day can go to _hell_!” Harold shouted. He huffed out a breath and blinked several times at the computer monitor in front of him. 

“Feel better?” Shaw asked mildly. 

“Not much,” Harold said. “This is all my fault.”

“Uh-huh, well, I’m not sitting around here while some sneaky creeper makes Reese’s insides into his outsides,” Shaw said. She patted Bear on the head and turned to go. “Call me if you find anything. I’m gonna go meet up with Carter.”

“Wait!” Harold called after her. He pushed himself up and went to get Bear’s leash. “I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not,” Shaw said. “Look at you, you can’t even walk.”

Harold limped over to where Bear was laying on the floor watching them both and snapped on his leash. “I am handi- _capable_ , Miss Shaw, and I am coming with you.”

“Fine,” Shaw said. “But I’m not slowing down for you.”

“Fine,” Harold snapped. 

True to her word, Shaw strode ahead of him out of the library and disappeared down the stairs before Harold and Bear had even reached the top landing. Harold decided to just let her go. He would find John his own way then. 

“Come on, Bear,” he told the dog. “Find John.”

Bear’s ears twitched, then he started pulling at the leash, hauling Harold along after him. 

“Wait until we get to the bottom of the stairs!” Harold shouted, grabbing for something to hold onto.

††††††††

John woke with a splitting headache in a dank, dark room tied to a metal chair. He didn’t lift his head just yet, trying to take in his surroundings and evaluate the situation before he alerted anyone. Anyone who, though? That was the real question. John looked around, slanting his eyes to the side to search out his captor in his peripheral vision. There was blood in his right eye and he was having a hard time bringing anything into focus. When he did manage it, everything spun and he felt like he was going to vomit.

Concussion, he decided. He shook his head and instantly regretted it. 

“You’re awake,” said a male voice. “I thought you might be.”

John picked his head up and looked around, but he couldn’t see into the shadows where the man was hiding himself. He was in a warehouse. The metal chair he was tied to was bolted to the floor. The knots were… They were good. He might be able to get himself free eventually, but it would take a while. Time enough to get caught at it. It wasn’t worth it. He had knives, but with his hands tied behind him, he couldn’t reach them. They were probably gone now anyway. Anyone who could tie a knot like the ones binding him would surely have thought to check him for weapons. The chair wasn’t close to any walls or any other furniture that he might use to rub against. 

“Who are you?” John asked. 

“Don’t you know?” the man asked. “You’ve been watching _me_ , after all. How did you figure it out? Hmm? You’re not police. The police are idiots.”

“What do you want?” John asked. He had no idea who the man might be. He wasn’t Don Parker, John had heard Don Parker speak and it wasn’t his voice. “Are you the construction worker? Richard Giovanni?”

“Ah, you know about him,” the man said. “Yes, I noticed your friend watching his house, watching him at work… Hmm. That’s curious, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” John said. “Who the hell are you?”

“Well, as I don’t know who _you_ are, I am loathe to introduce myself just yet,” the man said. “Since you apparently have no idea. That’s interesting, you know, since you’ve been watching who I’ve been watching. Now, why would you be doing that?”

“I guess because you’ve been watching them,” John said. “What do you want?”

“I want to play,” the man said softly. “I want to hear you scream. I want to take my time. I want you to die slowly and in agony with your blood on my hands. What do you think of that?”

John closed his eyes on the spinning nausea in his head and laughed. His voice was dry and cracked, but the laughter was full of genuine amusement. “What do I think?” he said. He ran his tongue over the back of his teeth and tried to see into the dark where he could sense the other man watching him. “I think if you’re gonna do it, you better do it right.”

The man took a couple of steps forward into the dim light. John studied his face closely, expecting to feel recognition wash over him at any moment. It didn’t happen. He had no idea who this person was. He was tall, dark haired, attractive in a forgettable kind of way, but nothing special… No, that wasn’t right. He was forgettable by design. He _worked_ at it because he had the kind of face you noticed. If John had ever met him, he was certain that he would have remembered it. 

The man smiled and walked over to a table against the wall on John’s left. He had a bundle in his hands and when he unrolled it on the table, it made a tinkling sound of metal on metal. Knives? Probably. Or something worse. 

When the man turned back around, he was smiling. There was a long, slender two-edged blade in his hand. “If I’m going to do it right, I guess we’d better get started,” he said. “First thing’s first; why don’t you tell me your name? This is all a little too intimate for us to go on being strangers, you know.”

John ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth and spit blood on the floor. He said nothing.

The man approached him with the knife, frowning now. “Well… have it your way, then.”

**XXX**

**Author's Note:**

> There's now a story following this one by Portrait_of_a_Fool called [Where the Wall Meets the Floor](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1041953).


End file.
